'Doctors' today

[Tim Streater]

Updating it for what?

[Paul]

Are the original vaccine designs a failure or not ?

With seasonal flu, nobody bats an eye when every year the composition of the vaccine is different. That's just the way it is with seasonal flu. That could partially be due to the shape of the virus and infection method it uses, and the inability to find a portion of it which does not mutate.

The original premise was, a portion of the COVID stalk does not mutate. Is that still true or not ?

Paul

[Steve Walker]

It has mutated, but not enough to make the vaccines ineffective - just less effective.

[The Natural Philosopher]

That is comparable with 'flu. You don't not get it, but it doesn't wreck you.

[lkpo]

It does in fact kill lots in non covid years.

[The Natural Philosopher]

A lot less who have had a flu jab.

Flu jabs work to *reduce* the problem

If you actually look up death statistics, its quite surprising what does kill people. Certainly COVID hasn't reached 'spanish flu' death rates, but then this is the 21st centurry and we have had lockdown.

I am perpetually amazed at the ArtStudent? thinking that everything is Boolean, binary and black or white.

Organic=good Science=bad. Renewable=good Nuclear = bad. EU= good Brexit = bad.

Vaccines don't protect you. Vaccines do protect you.

I suppose to People Who Cant Do Sums, there are no numbers between 0 and

1....

Anyway its all a bit academic. Omicron appears to be ripping through the populace, and the statistics on how many it kills who were, or were not, boostered and double vaxxed will be available soon enough.

[Steve Walker]

But of those who die, how many are vaccinated or not?

[lkpo]

That varies with the flu season. It is always a guessing game which strain will be important in the coming flu season. Sometimes they get that right, sometimes they don?t.

Only when they predict which strain matters correctly.

And now vaccines developed amazingly quickly, much more quickly than that has ever been done before with any disease.

Not really if a booster does help a lot to avoid severe disease and the virus killing you.

Infection wise, sure.

And so it isn't academic at all.

[Dave W]

How on earth do you have the patience to waste your time on this?

[Spike]

Perhaps the BBC has too much money.

[Chris Hogg]

No 'perhaps' about it.

[Dave Plowman (News]

Bill wants to be the modern incarnation of Mary Whitehouse?

[Dave Plowman (News]

I'd suggest you look at how much the alternatives cost.

And if you removed the BBC, how long do you think ITV would continue in its present FTA form, and still make (some) quality programmes?

[JNugent]

There was a time when ITV made quality programmes.

But that was a long time ago. Nowadays, the better things (such as they are) are made by independent production houses and could find their way to the home screen via a variety of other routes.

Just look at this week's listings magazines (and BBC1 is hardly any better). It isn't 1965 any more.

The loss of ITV from among all the offerings on terrestrial digital, satellite and streaming would only be noticeable to those determined to try to make a point about it.

Granada would suddenly revert to its old name and would try to sell "Coronation Street" and "Emmerdale" to Sky or Amazon Prime.

[williamwright]

It's important. We're being led down the garden path.

Bill

[williamwright]

No,because I like filth.

Bill

[Dave Plowman (News]

And the same sometimes with the BBC. Makes no difference. It's the BBC/ITV who commission and pay for them.

Who said it was?

ITV is a part owner of other FTA services too. And those services often rely on showing repeats of BBC and ITV progs.

Quite. Which you would then have to pay for.

[Dave Plowman (News]

And you seem to have a very large garden.

[Spike]

Why should I be forced to pay for the BBC, in part to support ITV? I rarely watch either, largely due to their incessant politically-correct 'messaging'. Catch-up is a god-send, as you can skip over the 'messaging' - sometimes this means that a 30-minute 'news' programme has less than five minutes of real news, and most of this is the weather forecast..

[JNugent]

And?

Making the point that both BBC and ITV no longer treat their contractual duty to provide public service broadcasting with the good faith they did back around then.

On cue... someone determined to make a point about it.

The back-catalogues would not suddenly disappear.

I don't have to pay for either of those (though I may choose to).

They aren't the BBC.